G7, meeting with Queen Elisabeth II… What a program for Joe Biden in Europe this week
The US president wants to renew America's "commitment" to her "allies." On the European side, concrete and lasting commitments are expected, before Joe Biden continues his first official visit abroad to Russia.
United States President Joe Biden this week begins his first official overseas visit since arriving at the White House, a European tour in which he will attend G7, NATO and the European Union (EU) before a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on June 16 in Geneva.
After the multilateral tensions that marked the presidency of his predecessor Donald Trump, the Democratic President will try to repair relations with his allies and mobilize them against their common adversaries, whether it is the Covid-19 pandemic or ambitions from Moscow and Beijing.
On these different subjects, as well as on the fight against climate change, the leaders of the G7 (Germany, Canada, United States, France, Italy, Japan and Great Britain which holds the rotating presidency this year) wish to show that the The West can face up to Chinese power and Russian voluntarism.
"America is back"
“In these times of widespread uncertainty, with the world still grappling with a hundred-year pandemic, this journey is about materializing America's renewed commitment to our allies and to our partners, ”wrote Joe Biden in a column published Saturday by the Washington Post.
For its Secretary of State for the Treasury, Janet Yellen, the historic agreement reached this weekend by the finance ministers of the G7 on a minimum taxation of companies - which must be formally validated by the leaders of the G7 at the end of the week - is proof that “multilateral cooperation can be fruitful”.
The G7 summit, which will take place from Friday to Sunday in the seaside resort of Carbis Bay, in Cornwall, in the south-west of England, will be the first test for Joe Biden's willingness to bring the United States back on the international scene, illustrated by the slogan "America is back".
G7 transition
But Washington's allies, wary after the Trump years, will want concrete and lasting commitments at this meeting, which will focus in particular on the health situation and the emergence of new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the fight against climate change. , the strengthening of global supply chains and the need to maintain the technological lead of the West vis-à-vis China, the world's second-largest economy.
The Biden administration should also call on the G7 to show a united front on the issue of forced labor charges imposed by China on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province, while trying to keep Beijing - which denies any repression - engaged in the efforts to combat global warming.
Russian ambitions will also be at the center of G7 discussions, ahead of Joe Biden's participation in the NATO summit in Brussels on Monday June 14 and his bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday June 16.
Joe Biden's schedule also includes bilateral meetings with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday, with Queen Elisabeth II on Sunday at Windsor Castle, and with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
This summit of G7 leaders will be the first as president for Joe Biden, as well as for Italian Mario Draghi as president of the Council and for Japan's Yoshihide Suga as prime minister. This first post-Brexit summit for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will also be the last for German Angela Merkel, who will step down from the chancellery next September after 16 years in power. For Emmanuel Macron, this will be the last G7 summit before the 2022 presidential election in France.
Subjects of disagreement
Regarding the program of discussions, a number of subjects are already not unanimous within the G7.
Thus, to help the less favored countries to vaccinate their population against Covid-19, after Joe Biden's about-face last month in favor of the lifting of patents, Europeans remain measured on short-term effectiveness. of such a proposal - which would likely require months of negotiations to materialize.
Such a project would probably be null and void if the rich countries share enough doses with the developing countries to slow down and then finally stop the pandemic.
The Biden administration announced last Thursday that the United States will deliver at least 80 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to the rest of the world by the end of June.
For its part, the EU, which has already contributed 2.2 billion euros to the Covax program, supervised by the World Health Organization (WHO) to ensure equitable access to vaccines throughout the world, also plans to donate at least 100 million doses by the end of the year.
